Father, Husband, Amateur Radio Operator NE4RD, and geek.

Since my last post was a long long long long time ago, I can’t claim this to be the most active blog in the world. I was hoping to put some side projects on here, as well as some ham radio items, but things have been crazy busy in real life. I have been active with the Linux in the Ham Shack podcast this year, and as well I’ve been a regular contributor to the Amateur Radio Newsline program for the K2BSA Amateur Radio Association.

I want to keep this post short, so here’s my list of goals:

Professionally I want to get better at my day job, and spend less time working on new features and more time on refactoring to make adding new features less painful

In podcasting, I want to continue working and improving on LHS and ARNewsline, as well I want to get YAARPcast off the ground

In open source, I want to get some of my hidden side projects (you know, the ones that only exist in your head) moved into reality or github

Personally I want to spend more quality time with my family, and less time shopping at Costco

That should keep things simple enough for now. I hope to also put some content here that doesn’t suck quite as much as this post.

Why not restart the blog? I’ve been forwarding my site to my Google+ profile for at least a year now, but haven’t really been an active poster on that platform. On this new incarnation of my blog, I’ll keep my activity tagged so you can filter what content you want, so to start with I’ll have hamradio, tech, and info. I’ll also work on a starter post for each individual section which should outline in general the topics that I’ll be posting about within each tag.

Stuff that I’ll be posting about? Well, just about anything. I want to experiment with podcasting, screencasting, and technical writing. I’ll be discussing things that are related to my work. I’m in general a programmer and systems administrator at work, however I tend to get involved in everything that I can. This allows me to continue learning on a daily basis and build additional and unique skill pairings in the future. In today’s economy and workplace, you must find ways everyday to provide value to your employer or company. Even if it’s not in your job description, you should take the time to make things happen! I’ll also be discussing technology and Amateur Radio. I’ve been a Ham for 21 years and I enjoy the evolution of technology, programming, and systems integration.

I tend to use my two Twitter accounts for most of my social activities (@wstearns / @ne4rd ). This allows me to segregate my hobby activity away from my normal activity. My two Twitter accounts are visible on the right side, if you care to follow I’ll follow you back as long as you’re a human and provide at least 75% original content. I love a good re-tweet like the next guy, but if that’s all you do I will not follow you. I already filter out many applications that I find noisy on Twitter with the help of TweetDeck. Here’s a short list of what I’m currently not able to see in my client:

Muting “pinterest.com”

Muting “nikeplus.nike”

Muting “73s.com”

Muting “justunfollow.com”

Muting “4sq.com”

Muting source “dlvr.it”

Muting source “twitterfeed”

Muting source “ifttt”

Muting source “zite personalized magazine”

Muting source “hrdlog.net”

Muting source “google”

Muting source “facebook”

Muting source “waze”

Muting source “paper.li”

Muting source “fitbit”

Muting source “club log”

Muting source “dx alert”

Muting source “dx monitor”

Muting source “nike application”

Muting source “fllwrs”

Muting source “nw7us update”

Muting source “marci”

Muting source “supertweetapi”

Muting source “newsrack on ios”

Muting source “unfollowers.me”

Muting source “tumblr”

Muting source “instagram”

Muting source “delicious”

Muting source “untappd”

Muting source “twentyfeet”

Muting source “sandaysoft cumulus”

Muting source “weather display tweet”

Muting source “si5r raspberry pi auto tweets”

Muting source “hamlocator”

Muting source “insight timer”

Muting source “win the customer”

Muting source “propagation and space weather at hfradio.org”

Should you want to have clean searches for original content, then I highly recommend using this or some other application that gives you the ability to filter by application or context.